Claw Stars mobile game yields strong early revenue for iCandy Interactive
iCandy’s new game Claw Stars has brought in revenues of nearly $300,000 within the first two weeks of its official global launch.
One of the newest mobile gaming apps to hit the global market in June has yielded strong early revenue growth for owner-developer iCandy Interactive (ASX: ICI).
Claw Stars (originally known as Hamstranauts) was launched worldwide on 30 June and raked in $299,570 within its first 14 days on the market.
The return followed the receipt of more than one million pre-orders on AppStore and Google Play.
User engagement rates for the game remain high according to iCandy, with a Day-3 retention rate of 25%.
A January early access trial of Claw Stars in collaboration with Google Play demonstrated a retention rate of 46% on the first day through to 18% one week later.
Masketeers comparison
The latest figures have been compared to iCandy’s hit product Masketeers: Idle Has Fallen, which brought in $265,000 over the first two weeks and had a Day-3 retention rate of 20%.
The single-player game recorded a comparatively lower early access trial retention rate of 37% on the first day through to 8% on day seven.
It also racked up significantly less pre-orders than Claw Stars.
Masketeers hauled in a generated revenue of $1 million just 63 days after its October launch, representing the fastest growth on record for an iCandy game.
Retention explained
The day retention rate is used as a measure of how engaging and addictive a mobile game can be to its audience.
It seeks to create a standard benchmark to determine the proportion of gamers who return to a game within a specified time period after installation.
According to iCandy, retention rates are closely watched by mobile gaming industry analysts as potential early indicators of a game’s future monetisation metric.
Interactive game
Claw Stars relies on player-to-player interactivity and is the first iCandy game to be multi-player driven.
Users can download and play the game for free, with the company generating income from in-app purchases and advertising.
iCandy said it was confident Claw Stars had the potential to emerge as one of its best performing titles.